Tha chat rooms are back!

After some thought and consideration, I have reopened the chat rooms, but this time, to prevent all the problems that they caused me in the past, I’m limiting their access to Premium members. This way I expect to avoid kids getting into the chat rooms just to bother others.
I haven’t created a menu option just for the chat rooms because they may not end up being very popular, in which case they can remain as links in other sections without standing in the way.

chat rooms at Trade Cards Online

Automatic deletion of bad users’ votes

I have set it up so that when a user gets removed because of Bad Trader Reports, or other violations of the Terms of Use, all votes they submitted with that account with an extreme value (minimum or maximum) get removed. This way we cancel one of the goals these user try to achieve (especially those with multiple accounts): to cheat the voting system. Hopefully this will increase fairness on the site and it also takes a tiresome task away from me!

A few restrictions on user names and passwords

In order to increase the security on the sites, I have added a few more restrictions to user names: they can not contain more than two digits, and passwords: they have to be at least four characters long, can not be identical to the user name, and can not have too many identical characters (‘0000′) or sequential numbers (‘12345′).

Automatic tweets!

Each time a new set is added to the site an update is posted now to my Twitter

Look who’s voting!

I had received multiple complaints about people voting unfairly on the site in order to get their own Card Reviews or Decks to get the first position. Even though only registered users with confirmed email addresses can vote, and only once, I have finally decided it makes sense to make the votes public and visible so that everybody knows who has voted for what, when and which value. Now you can list the votes details and sort them by date, user name or value:

Detailed list of votes received by a Card Review

More tables to play online

I had been receiving a lot of requests to increase the number of available tables in the gaming rooms. As the server can only handle a given number of concurrent games, I have decided to increase the number of tables but to limit their use so that Premium members (who pay for the servers and actually maintain the site economically) have preference. Now, when all the ‘normal’ tables are occupied, Premium members will still be able to challenge other players (either Premium or not) to a game.
This way everyone has more chances to be able to play, alleviating the reported problem, and at the same time they are encouraged to become Premium.
Let’s see how this works out…

More references details

When showing a user’s references, only those from active users were been listed and just the total of those from inactive users were indicated. Now I’m also detailing each of these references from old, inactive users so that we can see on what date they were granted and from which country.
I have also changed the sorting to be by date (instead of by user name) so that most recent references are on top and it is much easier to check if they are spread through a long period or if they are too concentrated in time.
In the ‘references’ section, I am also listing now the references you have received next to those you have given, also sorted by date.

Duplicating cards

I have added the option to the admins of the site when editing a card to duplicate it instead and insert it as a new card. This way we can create new cards that are very similar to previous ones in the same set, we just edit the similar card, change its number, which needs to be unique, and any other differences, and the card is created with the data provided.
I have just used it to add the Ultimate Rare and Ghost Rare versions of existing cards in the YuGiOh Crimson Crisis set.

Also, when uploading card images, I have added an appropriate error message when the zip file is too large (or corrupted).

Hotmail blocking all my messages!

One of the problems I encountered when moving to a new hosting company is that the IP addresses had to change, so I had to set up DNSs and stuff, but also, I found out that all my messages to hotmail addresses were been bounced! I had to set up special DNS records (SPF TXT records) but that was not enough. I had to answer a lot of questions from the guys at Microsoft and finally the lifted the block on my new IPs. It meant a lot of emails were lost (not redirected to spam folders, simply and directly deleted forever) and in the process I discovered that I’m sending around 3,000 email messages every day! Wow, that’s a lot of inter-user conversations, automatic reports on possible trades, and admin reports…!

I also need to implement a system that intercepts bouncing messages and cancels the responsible accounts.

Moved to new hosting company

I have been forced to move away from my hosting company, as they tried to charge me for services I did not receive and they were not willing to explain. It’s taking a lot of time and work but finally managed to do it with very little down time and without loosing any data.
And the servers now are more powerful and have all the latest software, so I’m running the whole site with just two machines (one of them for the online gaming), and it seems to go quite smoothly.